"Count me in, too," assented EDWIN.
"Dear me!" said the old lawyer, breaking a momentary spell of terror occasioned by Mr. BLADAMS having turned blue and nearly choked to death in a surreptitious attempt to swallow a cracker which he had previously concealed in one of his cheeks. "Dear me! although I am a square, practical man, I do believe that I could draw a picture of a true lover's state of mind to-night."
"A regular chromo," wheezed Mr. BLADAMS, encouragingly; pretending not to notice that his employer was reaching an ineffectual arm after the crackers at his own elbow.
"Subject to the approving, or correcting, judgment of Mr. E. DROOD, I make bold to guess that the modern true lover's mind, such as it is, is rendered jerky by contemplation of the lady who has made him the object of her virgin affectations," proceeded Mr. DIBBLE, looking intently at EDWIN, but still making farther and farther reaches toward the distant crackers, even to the increased tilting of his chair. "I venture the conjecture, that if he has any darling pet name for her, such as Pinky-winky,' 'Little Fooly,' 'Chignonentily,' or 'Waxy Wobbles,' he feels horribly ashamed if any one overhears it, and coughs violently to make believe that be never said it."
It was curious to see EDWIN listening with changing color to this truthful exposure of his young mind; the while, influenced unconsciously, probably, by the speaker's example, he, too, had begun reaching and chair-tilting toward the crackers across the table. What time Mr. BLADAMS, at the opposite side of the board, had apparently sunk into a sudden and deep slumber; although from beneath one of his folded arms a finger dreamily rested upon the rim of the cracker-plate, and occasionally gave it a little pull farther away from the approaching hands.
"My picture," continued Mr. DIBBLE, now quite hoarse, and almost horizontal in his reaching, to EDWIN DROOD, also nearly horizontal in the same way--"my picture goes on to represent the true lover as ever eager to be with his dear one, for the purpose of addressing implacable glares at the Other Young Man with More Property, whom She says she always loved as a Brother when they were Children Together; and of smiling bitterly and biting off the ends of his new gloves (which is more than he can really afford, at his salary,) when She softly tells him that he is making a perfect fool of himself. My picture further represents him to be continually permeated by a consciousness of such tight boots as he ought not to wear, even for the Beloved Object, and of such readiness to have new cloth coats spoiled, by getting hair-oil on the left shoulder, as shall yet bring him to a scene of violence with his distracted tailor. It shows him, likewise, as filled with exciting doubts of his own relative worth: that is, with self-questionings as to whether he shall ever be worth enough to buy that cantering imported saddle horse which he has already promised; to spend every summer in a private cottage at Newport; to fight off Western divorces, and to pay an eloquent lawyer a few thousands for getting him clear, on the plea of insanity, after he shall have shot the Other Young Man with More Property for wanting his wife to be a Sister to him, again, as she was, you know, when they were Children Together."
EDWIN, despite the coldness of the season, had perspired freely during the latter part of the Picture, and sought to disguise his uneasiness at its beautiful, yet severe truth, by a last push of his extended arm toward the crackers. Quickly observing this, Mr. DIBBLE also made a final desperate reach after the same object; so that both old man and young, while pretending to heed each other's words only, were two-thirds across the table, with their feet in the air and their chairs poised on one leg each. At that very moment, by some unhappy chance, while nearly the whole weight of the two was pressing upon their edge of the board, Mr. BLADAMS abruptly awoke, and raised his elbows from his edge, to relieve his arms by stretching. Released from his pressure, the table flew up upon two legs with remarkable swiftness, and then turned over upon Mr. DIBBLE and Mr. E. DROOD; bringing the two latter and their chairs to the floor under a shower of plates and crackers, and resting invertedly upon their prostrate forms, like some species of four-pillared monumental temple without a roof.
A person less amiable than the good Mr. DIBBLE would have borrowed the name of an appurtenance of a mill, at least once, as a suitable expression of his feelings upon such a trying occasion; but, instead of this, when Mr. BLADAMS, excitedly crying "fire!" lifted the overturned table from off himself and young guest, he merely arose to a sitting position on the littered carpet, and said to EDWIN, with a smile and a rub: "Pray, am I at all near the mark in my picture?"
"I should say, sir," responded EDWIN, with a very strange expression of countenance, also rubbing the back of his head, "that you are rather hard upon the feelings of the unluckly lover. He may not show all that he feels--"
There he paused so long to feel his nose and ascertain about its being broken, that Mr. DIBBLE limped to his feet and ended that part of the discussion by hobbling to an open iron safe across the office.